Author Topic: We are living in the worst age of men - like before the Deluge (Read 1675 times)

Matthew · « **on:** March 07, 2014, 04:01:34 PM »

It seems to be the common opinion that our times are actually worse than mankind before the deluge!

Think about that, and let that sink in.

Could you imagine one of the Patriarchs like Lot sending his children to public school in the town of Sodom? Could you imagine Noah sending his children to public school with all those wicked men around him? Could you imagine Noah having lots of "gentile" (the O.T. equivalent of non-Catholic) friends?

Do you suppose Noah and his family stayed home and kept to themselves a lot, or did they go out and fully enjoy what the world had to offer in terms of amusements?

Can anyone here find me the book/chapter where God gives lots of specific prohibitions to the Israelites, ending it with, "Because all these things the gentiles do."

I'm talking about the part where God says, "A mother should not lay down with her son, nor the father with his daughter. A person must not lay down with a beast", etc.

I remember a lot of very specific prohibitions related to Sixth & Ninth.

And at the end of it, God says, "all these things the gentiles do". So it's not like God was just making up these horrible crimes!

Let's put it this way: to the clean, all things are clean. It's hard for us to imagine, or put a face on, the evil in the world today. But if we read this list, it would probably give us some idea of the wickedness that goes on in our own Modern World on a daily basis.

Tiffany · « **Reply #1 on:** March 07, 2014, 04:22:30 PM »

Leviticus 18 - 20

andysloan · « **Reply #2 on:** March 07, 2014, 04:42:23 PM »

Deuteronomy 18:9-14

"When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee, beware lest thou have a mind to imitate the abominations of those nations. Neither let there be found among you any one that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire: or that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard,

Nor charmer, nor any one that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune tellers, or that seeketh the truth from the dead. For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations he will destroy them at thy coming. Thou shalt be perfect, and without spot before the Lord thy God. These nations, whose land thou shalt possess, hearken to soothsayers and diviners: but thou art otherwise instructed by the Lord thy God."

s2srea · « **Reply #3 on:** March 07, 2014, 06:01:19 PM »

Quote from: Matthew

It seems to be the common opinion that our times are actually worse than mankind before the deluge!

I think we're close to it, and very, but not quite there. What's sure is that we got here much quicker than they probably did. What makes me say that are verses like, Gen- 19:5 "And they called Lot, and said to him: Where are the men that came in to thee at night? bring them out hither, that we may know them:" I was taught that they sought to sodomize them, which is why Lot came out and said, at verse 8 "I have two daughters who, as yet, have not known man; I will bring them out to you, and abuse you them as it shall please you, so that you do no evil to these men, because they are come in under the shadow of my roof."

Anyways your point still stands.

Matthew · « **Reply #4 on:** March 07, 2014, 06:47:03 PM »

Quote from: s2srea

Quote from: Matthew
It seems to be the common opinion that our times are actually worse than mankind before the deluge!

I think we're close to it, and very, but not quite there. What's sure is that we got here much quicker than they probably did. What makes me say that are verses like, Gen- 19:5 "And they called Lot, and said to him: Where are the men that came in to thee at night? bring them out hither, that we may know them:" I was taught that they sought to sodomize them, which is why Lot came out and said, at verse 8 "I have two daughters who, as yet, have not known man; I will bring them out to you, and abuse you them as it shall please you, so that you do no evil to these men, because they are come in under the shadow of my roof."

Anyways your point still stands.

Actually, it's my fault for mixing together the pre-chastisement Sodom/Gomorrha and the pre-Deluge world.

We might be worse than the world before the Flood (which was stated by countless recent popes/mystics/etc.) yet not be quite as bad as Sodom before the fire & brimstone.

Matthew · « **Reply #5 on:** March 07, 2014, 06:50:28 PM »

Quote from: Tiffany

Leviticus 18 - 20

Precisely what I was talking about!

That's the kind of filth that must be going on behind closed doors today.

Everyone says "hi" to their neighbor, mows their lawn, takes the garbage out to the street, etc. But if we only knew what kind of stuff happened behind closed doors -- we'd probably move out to the wilderness.

Cantarella · « **Reply #6 on:** March 08, 2014, 01:24:44 AM »

Quote from: Matthew

Quote from: Tiffany
Leviticus 18 - 20

Precisely what I was talking about!

That's the kind of filth that must be going on behind closed doors today.

Everyone says "hi" to their neighbor, mows their lawn, takes the garbage out to the street, etc. But if we only knew what kind of stuff happened behind closed doors -- we'd probably move out to the wilderness.

I am afraid it is not behind close doors anymore. The diabolical filth is right in front of us and our children's face.

Cantarella · « **Reply #7 on:** March 08, 2014, 01:35:11 AM »

Let' take heart in these unfortunate times we live in by remembering the story of Blessed St. Benedict. We can look to the early 6th Century as the epoch closest to our own in the problems it posed for:

About 1,500 years ago, Theodoric marched into Rome as the ruler of all Italy. He was a Goth who could neither read nor write, a barbarian and, inasmuch as he was Christian, an Arian heretic, as were all the Gothic overlords who were not still pagan. What remained of the Roman Army, a ragtag municipal guard, suffered the humiliation of having to assemble to greet him, as did the Roman Senate, an ineffectual body with no real power. The brutes were in charge, men who despised the high culture of antiquity, not that much of it remained. The Roman aristocracy had grown decadent and cared for little more than its creature comforts and security.

The Church, having emerged from persecution two centuries earlier, had paid for its official acceptance by sinking ever deeper into mediocrity and corruption. The hierarchy was no longer the province of Martyrs, but the preserve of those who sought power. Rival claims to the papacy and factional wars turned an already tepid faithful into cynics and scoffers. Many of the clergy led dissolute lives and the general level of morality had sunk so low that a popular movement grew to restore the pagan festival of Luper calia, an obscene public orgy of fertility rites that culminated in naked men chasing women through the streets. This was the state of the city in which lay the bones of Peter and Paul.

Into this city entered a young man from a provincial town whose father had sent him to Rome to study. He was of noble family, and he saw firsthand the decadence of the aristocracy as well as that of the mob. But he was a devout young man and one night, pondering his future, he walked through the streets of Rome; through crumbling corridors where the statues and monuments former glory were defaced and vandalized; he passed through crowds of drunkards and gamblers and prostitutes; past street corners where the talk was all of the games and the pornographic shows; he walked on lamenting the loss of nobility in public life; of holiness in the Church; he walked until he came to a hill -- the eighth hill of Rome -- called the Hill of Shards, for it was there that all broken pottery was thrown, along with other assorted refuse. And there, on the Hill of Shards, amid the ruins of his world, this young man threw himself onto the wreckage and cried to God to show him a way to live his faith in a faithless world.

The young man's name was Benedictus of Nursia. We know him as St. Benedict.

Young Benedict knew that Roman civilization was finished and the institutional Church corrupt. So he turned his back on the city and went into the wilderness, there to serve God as a holy hermit. But Providence had a grand plan called Christendom and Benedict was to be its chief architect. To counter the great cultural disintegration of Church and State, Benedict eventually created a world within a world; a group culture within the general culture: the Benedictine monastery. This is not the time to expatiate on the monumental nature of the Benedictine contribution to Western Civilization. Many abler minds have done so. My interest is in the strategy of St. Benedict as a possible help to us in our present circuмstance, for we stand on our own Hill of Shards. The inertial force of Christendom has run out. Our world -- the Catholic world -- is finished. Western culture is finished. The barbarians are in charge -- everywhere. A new dark age is in the making; a world not only contemptuous of the Catholic faith, not only indifferent to the Catholic faith, but almost wholly ignorant of the Catholic faith.

We know, of course, that the Church, in some manner, will persist until the end of time; but we also know that Our Lord asked the haunting question, "When I come again, will I find any faith in the world?" So the size of the Church, Her structure, the extent to which She will remain a notable presence in the world are made open questions by the very words of Her Founder.

What the Rule of St. Benedict accomplished was to create a community in which men could pursue spiritual perfection as their sole aim while fulfilling all of the duties incuмbent upon them as creatures of flesh as well as spirit. That men of so other-worldly an orientation turned a barbarous continent into a Christian land represents one of those paradoxes that the ungodly always fail to understand, for it rests on the Divine counsel, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all else will be added unto you."

Anyone who reads the Rule is struck first of all by the personality of St. Benedict: his gentleness, his fraternal charity, his prudence, his profound love of God. How attractive a man he must have been. Next, one notices the insistence on regularity and attention to detail as indispensable elements to a holy community life and individual spiritual progress".

Marlelar · « **Reply #8 on:** March 08, 2014, 04:05:37 AM »

Cantarella - where is this quote taken from?

Marsha

andysloan · « **Reply #9 on:** March 08, 2014, 01:02:49 PM »

"The times are grievous. The whole world is in turmoil because it has become worse than at the time of the deluge! Everything is in suspense,
like a thread; when this thread breaks, the justice of God will fall like a thunderbolt and will complete its terrible course of purification."

(Prophetic Vision of Sr. Elena Aiello, Foundress of The Sister Minims, December 8th, 1958)

StCeciliasGirl · « **Reply #10 on:** March 08, 2014, 01:27:04 PM »

This is such a scary thought. I've usually been scorned (esp when I was a child) for asking general rhetorical questions about antediluvian times, but I have a strong belief in them, though I don't understand them because there's not much Church-approved to go on. Things like, Genesis 6, I've often wondered who exactly the "sons of God" and "the daughters of men" were, and "the giants" they gave birth to. Later in h.s. age and college, I'd thought a lot of mythological stories might have come from Noah and his generations retelling stories of these giants (or making up new ones from what they'd heard). Mom said that Cain and his gang were attracting what was left of Godly men's daughters and making ungodly families who most-all started following anti-Godly ways, (and not to even judge Cain in my mind since God handled Cain his way, and that's all we really know about Cain). She got what she said from now long-deceased priests she trusted. Daddy thought we'd go to Hell for asking such questions, and to shut up and think about the present.

But ITA: it is like the present possibly (or, as s2srea said, we're getting there).

Starting as a young teen, and well into college, I made a timeline chart (relative timeline, assuming I don't know the units of time involved, much less when these things took place, but placing everybody I could in order using a "Scriptures-true timeline"). I still have it and started several times trying to copy it (by hand and into various databases I tried). If it's right (I'm human so I err), most of the people we read about in early Genesis, except Henoch of course (the one who "walked with God"), including Methuseleh (Mathusala) himself, were killed in the flood. Sort of sad; very eye-opening.

Note: of course, the Scriptures (based on Vulgate, not others) don't say how most of these antediluvians' "and he died" (Gen 5), died, but the information's there: many of their "and he died" times ended AT the flood. It's true that Mathusala might have died of natural causes just before the flood came -- my charts, no matter how carefully I did them -- couldn't allow for more accuracy than God afforded Moses' scribes to record, BUT, Mathusala was alive and well for about 100 Genesis-years as Noah was building the ark! (And not only Mathusala, of course: his sons, daughters, etc; others born in the prior times with those long lifespans).

Maybe all this is a known, but for some reason, drawing it out and seeing in in chart form like that, when it hit me they died at the flood date , it really hit me hard. I find it so sad, because many of these people would have known the big wigs from the beginning (or their first children). They truly lost the Faith even though they probably had amazing proofs all around them.

I don't think it mattered if they had Cain-blood in them or not, just as Mom had said a trad priest told her. I think that's what Gen 6 is saying — no matter how great their parents might have been, or whatever wondrous miracles they SURELY witnessed in that antediluvian world (that simply wasn't recorded), the fake-holiest people still died in the flood. (Huge reason for my current signature: so many souls gone to Hell, both now of course, but also from the start, probably people like Mathusala who denied that God might judge them and themselves judged Noah ridiculous.)

I know Prots hate this thought, though I'm not sure why. But to me, even if Mathusala might have been really sick or something his last hundred years, as Noah built the ark, and Mathusala died naturally in a cave somewhere without even having heard about an ark and the "crazy man" (as I imagine Noah was dubbed) talking about judgment, you have to ask, for a hundred years? Plus what even the Prots' translations have, Methuselah was living during the ark-building, and God said ONLY Noah and his sons' families were getting on the boat. Surely the warnings EVERYONE ELSE were given went ignored. (Which sounds real familiar, doesn't it?!)

Marsha, Cantarella got it from here (or http://www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/exile.htm if I didn't do the link right). Good read.

Thurifer · « **Reply #11 on:** March 08, 2014, 03:41:55 PM »

The point is understood, but surely this can't be true.

Believe it or not, we are still living in the Age of Grace and in the Last Days.

Have been since 33 A.D.

Sin is sin. Un-repented murder will win you hell as surely as missing Mass on a Sunday as a willful act without repentance.

Things aren't as bad as the media would lead us to believe. I am looking out my window right now and do not see two homos going at it. Based on ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ stories in the media I would expect to see more than one pair.

andysloan · « **Reply #12 on:** March 08, 2014, 04:48:06 PM »

3 Kings 14:22-24

"And Juda did evil in the sight of the Lord, and provoked him above all that their fathers had done, in their sins which they committed. For they also built them altars, and statues, and groves upon every high hill and under every green tree: There were also the effeminate in the land, and they did according to all the abominations of the people whom the Lord had destroyed before the face of the children of Israel."